Villager Jobs and Workstations: The Complete List
Every villager profession, the workstation block that assigns it, and how to reroll trades until you get the enchantment or price you want.
Villagers are the most powerful renewable resource in Minecraft. A properly set up trading hall gives you unlimited emeralds, enchanted books, and diamond gear without ever touching an enchanting table. It all starts with understanding how jobs are assigned.
How a villager gets a job
An unemployed adult villager will claim a workstation block placed within range, and take the matching profession. Put down a lectern near a jobless villager and, shortly after, they become a Librarian.
Three rules control this:
- Only adults take jobs. Baby villagers must grow up first.
- Nitwits never take a job. They wear green and are permanently useless for trading. You can identify them before wasting a workstation.
- Once a villager trades with you even once, their profession is locked. Breaking the workstation after that will not change it. This is the single most important fact in this guide.
Every profession and its workstation
- Farmer — Composter. Sells bread, pumpkin pie, golden carrots; buys crops.
- Fisherman — Barrel. Sells enchanted fishing rods and cooked fish; buys string and coal.
- Shepherd — Loom. Sells wool, beds, banners, paintings; buys dyes.
- Fletcher — Fletching Table. Sells arrows, bows, crossbows; buys sticks — one of the cheapest early emerald sources.
- Librarian — Lectern. Sells enchanted books, bookshelves, name tags, glass. The most valuable villager in the game.
- Cartographer — Cartography Table. Sells explorer maps to mansions and monuments, plus banner patterns.
- Cleric — Brewing Stand. Sells ender pearls, glowstone, lapis, bottles o' enchanting; buys rotten flesh.
- Armorer — Blast Furnace. Sells iron, chain and eventually enchanted diamond armour.
- Weaponsmith — Grindstone. Sells enchanted iron and diamond swords and axes.
- Toolsmith — Smithing Table. Sells enchanted diamond tools; buys coal and iron.
- Butcher — Smoker. Sells cooked meat and buys raw; a good use for a large animal farm.
- Leatherworker — Cauldron. Sells leather armour, horse armour and saddles.
- Mason — Stonecutter. Sells bricks, quartz, terracotta and glazed terracotta — excellent for builders.
Rerolling trades
This is how you get exactly the book you want instead of whatever you were given.
- 1.Place a workstation next to an unemployed villager and wait for them to take the job.
- 2.Open the trade menu and look at the offers — but do not trade.
- 3.If you do not like what you see, break the workstation.
- 4.The villager loses the profession. Place the workstation again and they reroll with a fresh set of trades.
- 5.Repeat until you get what you want, then trade once to lock it in.
The moment you complete a single transaction, that villager's trades are permanent. Check carefully before buying anything.
Prices, discounts and demand
Prices are not fixed. Several things move them:
- Trading repeatedly raises the price of that specific trade as demand rises. It settles back over time.
- Curing a zombie villager gives a large, permanent discount from that villager — the strongest price reduction available. Our guide on curing zombie villagers covers the method.
- Hero of the Village, earned by defeating a raid, discounts trades for everyone in the village while the effect lasts.
- Attacking villagers raises prices. Do not hit your traders.
Levelling a villager up through the five tiers — Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Master — unlocks better stock. Trading anything with them earns the experience, so the cheapest trade repeated is a fine way to level a Librarian toward the good books.
Setting up a trading hall
The practical layout is simple: one villager per cell, each with their own workstation, each reachable through a gap you can trade through but they cannot walk out of. Keep them separated so they cannot swap workstations with each other.
Two details make a real difference. First, keep beds out of the trading hall unless you want them breeding — a growing population competes for workstations and confuses assignments. Second, light everything thoroughly and enclose the roof; a zombie reaching your Librarian at night undoes a lot of work, although as our curing guide explains, that can be turned into an advantage if you are prepared.
Once running, a trading hall makes emeralds the easiest currency in the game and turns diamond gear into something you buy rather than mine.